FREE TO BE: Thin v. Happy

By J. Alison Hilber

I know you are used to believing that its thin equals
happy. That, indeed, is what this society continues to encourage
us to believe. Women especially are fed (no pun intended) great piles
of misinformation, both subliminal and direct, about how being thin
will change everything in our lives. Most importantly, once we are
thin, we will be happy. The message being, of course, that if we are
fat (or even just not what currently passes for thin), we will NOT
be happy.

This strong, media-driven, patriarchal philosophy does not stop
with making us unhappy with our bodies. It permeates all levels of
our self-esteem. Because once we give away our power to those who
would have us believe that being thin is the ultimate goal, then we
have given away our power emotionally and spiritually, as well. Any
time we allow others to dictate how we feel or how we see ourselves,
it is because we give them the power to do so. There are not people
out there who have been given the inherent ability and duty to make
us feel bad about ourselves or decide who we should be and how we should
look. They only have that ability because we give it to them. We,
as a society, have been convinced to relinquish our own control about
whats right for us to huge media groups, who then give us the
answers through magazines, commercials, television, movies. Once we
see what they have decided for us, we can see whether we measure up
and what we must do to change so we can be just like that and, therefore,
happy.

As individuals, we often continue this pattern by giving this
power to specific others in our lives: our family, our partner, our
boss, our friends. We often even give our power to inanimate objects
like mirrors, calorie counters, and numbers on a scale. We take the
information we have requested from the media, and which they have so
graciously and gladly provided us, and we find ways in our own world
to make it true. We find people who will tell us we look bad or should
really only wear dark colors or shouldnt sit in the front of
the room or shouldnt say whats on our mind or shouldnt
eat that double chocolate chocolate chip cookie. We scrutinize every
inch of ourselves finding all the flaws; we take a perfectly fine mood
and ruin it by stepping on a scale and finding ourselves lacking.
We create situations whereby we begin to live limited, shameful, scared
lives, afraid to be seen or heard or loved. Sure that no one out there
wants to see us or hear us or love us.

This is when the media really, really has us where they want us.
Because this is when they can completely sell the idea of thin equalling
happy. Spiritual and emotional needs are way too fluid for the media
to generalize about, but bodies are another thing. Everyone has one,
everyone can perceive everyone elses. You dont have to
know another thing about the person to see their body. It is the first
impression, and therefore the easiest to manipulate. You can compare
yourself and make all sorts of judgments without even having to say
a word without even making eye contact without even being in the same
room. Setting up standards of beauty, whether about bodies
or faces or hair or toes, is about setting up a structure by which
we can all easily compare ourselves and decide whether or not we are
worthy. And the more the media continues to equal thin with being
worthy of love and happiness, the more we strive to go there and be
that. We believe that once we achieve thinness, we will
be free from the struggle and the pain and the shame and the comparisons,
and all will be well and joyful at last.

What a pile of crap! What a huge, amazingly pervasive, incredibly
worshipped pile of crap! Thinness will NOT set you free. It may seemingly
make you happy for a while, because suddenly all those people holding
your power will be so proud that you have finally accomplished what
they asked of you, that they will, for a while, shower you with adoration
and praise. So now you are thin. Cool! Now what? Now you get to
worry about getting fat, and what will happen to all this adoration
and praise then? And will these people still love you if that happens?
Oh, goddess, we cant let that happen! Wow! Sounds like more
of a prison than they said being fat was!!

Now, there are many, many people out there making huge amounts
of money from this media blitz about thin equaling happy. There are
fitness programs, diet programs, food manufacturers, plastic surgeons,
motivational speakers, authors. They are all out there using this
premise of thin = happy to sell you something that will help make you
thin. You just need more exercise; come spend your money with us and
well sweat it off of you. You just need to eat less; come spend
your money with us and well help you starve. You just need support
while you exercise and eat less; come spend your money with us and
we will write down the number on the scale for you every week. You
just need a smaller stomach; come spend your money with us and we will
completely adjust your insides so you cant hold more than 2 oz.
of food at a time. You just need to find out why you eat so much;
come spend your money with us and well help you fix your emotions.
Do any of these people actually care about who you are inside? Do
they learn about your dreams or your hopes or your strength and courage
and spiritual depth? Do they even give a damn if you are healthy?
Mostly, no. They only care about making you THIN, and then providing
you with more ways to spend your money to maintain that new, acceptable
status. They arent caring about whether the stress of the shame,
the worry, the continuing loss of self-esteem is slowly killing your
soul. As long as you look good getting there! They continue to shackle
you to the idea of thin equaling happiness and therefore shackle you
to their product/program/philosophy forever. Free at last??? I dont
think so.

Here is what we must learn: There is no freedom in being or trying
to be that which you are not. There is no freedom in trying to be a
rich corporate executive if what you are is a dancer. There is no
freedom in trying to be white if you are black. There is no freedom
in trying to be male if you are female. There is no freedom in trying
to be thin if you are not. There is only struggle and failure and
depletion of your spirit. Anytime we fight against our true spirit,
we will not find freedom. We can only be free by connecting with whatever
Divine source we believe in, and letting it flow through us. Then
we begin to feel the joy and peace and exhilaration of true freedom:
the freedom with comes when we allow ourselves to be who we truly are,
physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

Happiness is an in-the-moment feeling that ebbs and flows with
the workings of the tangible world. Joy, however, is more foundational,
and is born from gratitude and self-love. Joy comes from choosing
to be joyous. The contrast in the world will show you all the choices
you have. And society will try to sell you what they want you to choose.
But unless you give it away, only YOU have the power to decide who
you are, what makes you happy in the moment, and what brings you joy
inside. And those choices need to be made from your heart and soul,
listening to your true source, knowing your own intrinsic value and
worth in the world.

We are all born worthy and deserving of love. We do not have
to earn it. We only have to remember it.

J. Alison Hilber - Change How You See, Not How You LookBody Celebration Workshops for Women. Six-week sessions
and one-day intensives available. (802) 658-5313 or leelabody@cs.com